Episcopalian Deacon Lou Ness’ load has become lighter with the weather.

She dumped her cart around Pittsburgh, Penn., and, these days, she has no change of clothes. She rinses out her garb every night and dons the same outfit in the morning.

There is no makeup nor deodorant in her pack. But there’s plenty of dehydrated foods and Starbucks Via Instant Coffee.

And hiking poles. The executive director for Shelter Care Ministries carries hiking poles to aid her along on a hike to Washington, D.C.

She expects to reach her destination by Thursday, stay a week and talk to those who can affect change about the stories of poverty that she’s collected from the road.

The meetings are lining up, but the 65-year-old Ness still has nothing confirmed with legislators.

“We’ve asked. We’ve made requests,” said Ness, warning that she just may knock on some Congressional doors to get an audience.

However, she’s ready to come home.

“I want to come home,” she said over the telephone on a Monday hike that began from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. “I miss my family. I’m ready to get back to work.”

Ness’ journey from Shelter Care Ministries’ headquarters, 412 N. Church St., began on April 1. She had received a holy message.

“Walk out the door of the church,” Ness said God told her. “Walk to Washington, D.C., and say: ‘You have not heard the cry of my people.’ I’m taking the stories of the people who live in poverty across this part of the country, from Rockford to D.C.”

The journey has taken longer than she expected in terms of miles she expected to travel through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and onward to the nation’s capital.

She has experienced much along the way, including news that a dear friend, younger than she, has fourth-stage, untreatable cancer and may only live less than a year. There also was a recent stop at the hospital because of a bad blister.

And the grandmother and U.S. Army veteran who copes with neutropenia, a bone marrow disease that causes white blood cell deficiencies, has collected many stories from impoverished.

For example, she has walked into a truck stop to get warm and met a truck driver whose wife had been hospitalized. He told her he was running out of money and then offered to give Ness $5 to buy a cup of coffee.

Ness says she mentions Rockford whenever she can, mentioning that the challenges are employment, housing and racism. When she returns, she wants to keep up the meditative walking routine.